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Directed by Jon Hewitt
Written by Jon Hewitt & Belinda McClory
Stars: Viva Bianca, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Stephen Phillips

Holly Rowe (Viva Bianca) is a successful call-girl, she plans to get out of the game for good and start a new life in Paris. The night before she’s due to depart for Europe, she decides to take one more job, a threesome at a Sydney Hotel but needs another girl. She approaches young and inexperienced hooker Shay (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) and offers her a wad of cash to come along for the trick. Shay agrees and the pair soon wind up hiding in a luxury hotel bathroom as a deal goes south and their client is gunned-down by the psychopathic Bennett (Stephen Phillips) who spends the rest of the night tracking the pair in order to tie up any loose ends. From the opening scene, where Holly has luridly protracted sex with a male prostitute in front of a group of wealthy champagne-sipping menopausal housewives, the film seems to declare itself to be unreserved exploitation. No problem there then but writer/director Jon Hewitt places these characters within a believable and recognisable landscape, Sydney’s Kings Cross. The camera feels Shay’s humiliation as she’s initiated into prostitution but then leers on naked flesh like the camera operator is only using one hand. Viva Bianca’s Holly is believable but the performance is stilted and underwritten, Mangan-Lawrence is convincing but she’s chopped off at the knees by dodgy scripting. The character of Bennett is so full-throttle misogynistic and sadistically cartoony, he belongs in a different film. It’s hard to see Hewitt’s motivations in telling this story in the first place as there are elements of a cautionary tale, erotic thriller and exploitation but it doesn’t really commit on either front. It fails to draw the audience in and simply revels in the grotesque carnality of it all, leaving the characters to flop about pointlessly, ciphers pulling us through a sea of sleaze.

JARROD WALKER